I 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSI1Y  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


STEVENSON'S    ATTITUDE    TO    LIFE 
JOHN  FRANKLIN  GENUNG 


ITEVENSON'S  ATTITUDE 
TO  LIFE  :  WITH  READ- 
INGS FROM  HIS  ESSAYS 
AND  LETTERS.  BY  JOHN 
FRANKLIN  GENUNG 


THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  AND  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS:  NEW  YORK:  MDCCCCI 


Copyright,  1901,  by  T.  Y.  Crowell  &  Co. 


Twelfth  Thousand 


D.  B.  Updike,  The  Merrymount  Press,  Boston 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

|HE  marks  of  oral  discourse, 
which  this  book  still  bears  from 
its  original  form  as  a  lecture,  it 
has  not  been  thought  best  to  re- 
move. What  was  first  read  aloud 
by  the  author  he  now  gives,  to 
those  who  care  for  the  theme,  opportunity  to 
read  for  themselves.  And  if,  beyond  the  sound 
of  his  voice,  some  fit  audience  may  like  to  hear 
how  the  deep  music  of  life  reverberates  from 
one  of  the  sanest  minds,  one  of  the  bravest 
hearts,  of  the  century  just  past,  the  purpose  of 
this  little  volume  will  be  fulfilled. 
For  the  readings,  which  have  a  very  vital  share 
in  giving  the  volume  whatever  value  it  has, 
thankful  acknowledgment  is  hereby  made  to 
Messrs.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  who  have 
kindly  given  permission  to  quote  from  works 
of  which  they  hold  the  copyright.  The  readings 
are  taken  from  the  Thistle  Edition  of  Steven* 
son's  works. 

Amherst,  Massachusetts,  February  6,  1901. 


STEVENSON'S  ATTITUDE  TO  LIFE 

iTEVENSON'S  attitude  to  life: 
this  is  what  we  now  propose  to 
consider ;  a  natural  enough  sub- 
ject of  inquiry,  it  would  seem; 
and  yet  the  very  proposal,  as 
thus  phrased,  is  a  departure 
from  the  Stevensonian  idiom.  If 
he  had  the  framing  of  an  ideal  for  us,  his  first 
counsel,  I  imagine,  would  be,  Do  not  assume 
an  attitude  toward  life  at  all,  but  just  live;  do 
not  be  a  spectator  and  critic  of  the  business  of 
living,  but  throw  yourself  into  the  heart  of  it, 
and  be  all  there,  and  say  no  more  about  it. 

i 

ROM  this  consideration  radi- 
ates our  whole  subject.  In  Ste- 
venson's implicit  philosophy  a 
formulated  attitude  would  be 
too  much  like  attitudinizing; 
too  self-conscious  and  put  on; 
too  much  sicklied  o'er  with  the  uneasy  intro- 
spectiveness  of  the  tired  century.  Enough  of 
posing  and  irresolution  outside  the  arena  of 
life ;  such,  we  may  be  sure,  was  his  thought  as 
he  listened  to  the  utterances  that  came  surging 
up  to  him  from  the  inner  heart  of  his  time.  And 
so  what  he  represents  first  and  wholesomest 
of  all,  what  most  gives  him  power  on  his  age, 
is  the  robust  reaction  against  all  this  which 
breathes  like  an  ozone  through  every  page  of 
his  writings.  Not  that  this  reaction  is  overt, 
or  that  he  takes  it  upon  himself  to  set  up  a  pro- 

i 


J>tewn0on'6  test.  One  great  element  of  his  power,  on  the 
to  contrary,  is  the  entire  absence  of  remonstrance, 
or  of  anything  merely  negative  or  repressive. 
He  simply  ignores  that  benumbing  arriere  pen- 
sde  which  for  full  half  a  century  has  so  beset 
the  faith  of  the  world,  and  dares  to  take  life 
at  its  positive  intrinsic  value,  without  the  dis- 
quiet of  morbid  analysis.  That  is  all;  his  "atti- 
tude" is  merely  the  free  joyous  erectness  of  the 
undismayed  soul. 

To  approach  life  with  fearless  confidence  that 
it  means  intensely  and  means  good;  to  bear 
full  weight  upon  it,  never  letting  encroaching 
doubts  or  disillusions  chill  the  youthful  spirit 
in  which  the  soul  first  welcomes  the  world,  — 
a  hearty  gospel  this ;  introduced  by  him,  too, 
just  at  a  time  when  the  spirit  of  the  age  might 
turn  to  it  most  gratefully,  as  to  a  sunshine  out 
of  fogs  and  discomfort.  And  not  only  Steven- 
son's words,  but  his  life  no  less,  ennobled  that 
gospel ;  maintained  as  it  was  under  such  diffi- 
culties of  physical  weakness  and  enforced  exile 
that  just  for  this  brave  service  we  count  him 
among  the  heroes  and  martyrs  of  literature ; 
classing  him  as  a  worthy  peer  in  the  same  rank 
with  Walter  Scott,  breathing  forth  the  rarest 
spirit  of  romance  from  under  his  burden  of  un- 
righteous debt,  and  Charles  Lamb,  adding  to 
the  world's  joy  by  his  immortal  words  written 
from  the  home  where  in  lifelong  renunciation 
of  conjugal  comfort  he  was  caring  for  a  mad 
sister.  All  these  buried  their  hardships  in  si- 
lence away  from  the  world,  while  they  coined 
their  life's  best  ore  into  a  mintage  of  health  and 

2 


cheer.  Nor  can  we  count  the  latest-born  the  £)teven6ori>6 
least  of  these,  when  we  recall  how  almost  from  Rttitttbe  to 
earliest  years  he  lived  face  to  face  with  death, 
yet  not  in  defiance  but  with  unflagging  buoy- 
ancy and  courage  wrought  as  he  could  snatch 
respite  from  disease  to  fulfil  what  we  may  truly 
call  his  message  to  the  world.  To  work  thus 
was  his  animating  principle,  his  life-creed ;  and 
this  very  triumph  of  spirit  was  his  greatest 
message. 

You  remember  how  bravely  this  trait  of  his 
comes  to  expression  in  his  essay  JEs  Triplex, 
an  essay  not  only  full  of  his  own  life  but  singu- 
larly prophetic  of  his  manner  of  leaving  it.  The 
whole  essay  ought  to  be  quoted ;  I  will  read  you 
merely  the  last  page.  "Who  would  find  heart 
enough,"  he  says,  "to  begin  to  live,  if  he  dallied 
with  the  consideration  of  death?  . . .  It  is  better 
to  lose  health  like  a  spendthrift  than  to  waste 
it  like  a  miser.  It  is  better  to  live  and  be  done 
with  it,  than  to  die  daily  in  the  sick-room.  By 
all  means  begin  your  folio ;  even  if  the  doctor 
does  not  give  you  a  year,  even  if  he  hesitates 
about  a  month,  make  one  brave  push  and  see 
what  can  be  accomplished  in  a  week.  It  is  not 
only  in  finished  undertakings  that  we  ought  to 
honour  useful  labour.  A  spirit  goes  out  of  the 
man  who  means  execution,  which  outlives  the 
most  untimely  ending.  All  who  have  meant 
good  work  with  their  whole  hearts,  have  done 
good  work,  although  they  may  die  before  they 
have  the  time  to  sign  it.  Every  heart  that  has 
beat  strong  and  cheerfully  has  left  a  hopeful 
impulse  behind  it  in  the  world,  and  bettered  the 

3 


tradition  of  mankind.  And  even  if  death  catch 
to  people,  like  an  open  pitfall,  and  in  mid-career, 
laying  out  vast  projects,  and  planning  mon- 
strous foundations,  flushed  with  hope,  and 
their  mouths  full  of  boastful  language,  they 
should  be  at  once  tripped  up  and  silenced:  is 
there  not  something  brave  and  spirited  in  such 
a  termination?  and  does  not  life  go  down  with 
a  better  grace,  foaming  in  full  body  over  a 
precipice,  than  miserably  straggling  to  an  end 
in  sandy  deltas?  When  the  Greeks  made  their 
fine  saying  that  those  whom  the  gods  love  die 
young,  I  cannot  help  believing  they  had  this 
sort  of  death  also  in  their  eye.  For  surely,  at 
whatever  age  it  overtake  the  man,  this  is  to 
die  young.  Death  has  not  been  suffered  to  take 
so  much  as  an  illusion  from  his  heart.  In  the 
hot-fit  of  life,  a-tiptoe  on  the  highest  point  of 
being,  he  passes  at  a  bound  on  to  the  other  side. 
The  noise  of  the  mallet  and  chisel  is  scarcely 
quenched,  the  trumpets  are  hardly  done  blow- 
ing, when,  trailing  with  him  clouds  of  glory, 
this  happy-starred,  full-blooded  spirit  shoots 
into  the  spiritual  land." 

A  "happy-starred,  full-blooded  spirit,"  — how 
well  this  phrase  describes  that  man  within 
Stevenson  who  so  courageously  and  against 
such  tyrannous  odds  struggled  toward  an  ut- 
terance that  should  be,  like  himself,  full  of  the 
glory  of  life.  "Vital,"  he  writes  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  Colvin,  — "that's  what  I  am  at  first: 
wholly  vital,  with  a  buoyancy  of  life."  This  was 
not  an  aim  that  came  to  him  casually;  he  knew 
well  what  it  meant,  and  how  it  squared  with  his 
4 


limitations.  "Quite  early  in  his  career,"  s 
Edmund  Gosse,  "he  adjusted  himself  to  the  JTttitu&e  to 
inevitable  sense  of  physical  failure.  He  threw 
away  from  him  all  the  useless  impediments:  he 
sat  loosely  in  the  saddle  of  life.  Many  men  who 
get  such  a  warning  as  he  got  take  up  something 
to  lean  against ;  according  to  their  education  or 
temperament,  they  support  their  maimed  exis- 
tence on  religion,  or  on  cynical  indifference,  or 
on  some  mania  of  the  collector  or  the  dilettante. 
Stevenson  did  none  of  these  things.  He  deter- 
mined to  make  the  sanest  and  most  genial  use 
of  so  much  of  life  as  was  left  him.  As  any  one  who 
reads  his  books  can  see,  he  had  a  deep  strain  of 
natural  religion ;  but  he  kept  it  to  himself;  he 
made  no  hysterical  or  ostentatious  use  of  it." 
This  deep-lying  strain  in  Stevenson's  nature, 
all  the  more  potent  because  so  sacredly  reti- 
cent,—which  Mr.  Gosse  calls  natural  religion, 
which  in  order  to  avoid  an  ungenial  connota- 
tion I  prefer  to  call  his  attitude  to  life,  —  let  us 
now  consider  a  little  more  particularly,  looking 
first  at  its  power  and  timeliness  in  the  age,  and 
then  at  its  more  salient  elements,  as  springing 
from  their  points  of  outset  in  him. 

ti 

|N  his  relation  to  the  age,  Steven- 
son may  be  regarded  as  pioneer 
in  the  new  mood  or  spiritual  cur- 
rent now  well  under  way ;  a  mood 
much  heartier  and  wholesomer 

than  what  it  succeeds ;  nor  is  it 

on  the  whole  less  reverent,  albeit  far  less  ob- 

5 


£tewti60n'6  servant  of  devotional  or  philosophical  forms. 

Jf  ttttu&e  to     We  may  in  a  word  call  it  a  spiritual  return  to 
nature. 

A  few  moments  ago  I  spoke  of  that  blighting 
arriere  pensde  which  has  so  inveterately  clung 
to  a  half-century's  faith,  and  the  complete  ig- 
noring of  which  gives  so  invigorating  a  tone  to 
Stevenson's  work.  In  1889  Richard  Holt  Hutton 
described  this  as  "the  spiritual  fatigue  of  the 
world,"  and  by  way  of  illustration  named  such 
works  as  Amiel's  Journal  and  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward's  Robert  Elsmere.  We  also,  as  we  re- 
call the  period  stretching  back  from  that  date, 
have  a  general  sense  that  much  of  its  foremost 
utterance  was  morbid,  and  very  little  of  it  buoy- 
antly joyful.  We  recall  how  George  Eliot  sat 
in  pensive  despair  over  a  world  to  be  noble 
and  unhappy  in;  how  Matthew  Arnold  was 
dejectedly 
"Wandering  between  two  worlds,  —  one  dead, 

The  other  powerless  to  be  born;" 
how  Clough  gave  up  the  whole  problem,  yet 
still  clung  to  it  in  blank  bewilderment;  how  it 
was  as  much  as  ever  that  Tennyson,  by  a  dead 
lift  of  faith,  succeeded  in  reaching  a  point 
where  on  the  whole  the  odds  were  in  favour  of 
heaven ;  how  even  Browning,  with  his  insistent 
optimism,  not  seldom  gave  the  impression  of 
whistling  to  keep  his  courage  up.  Every  out- 
look of  life  was  clouded  with  difficulty  and 
gloom.  We  did  not  feel  the  strain  of  it  so  much 
then;  it  was  the  dominant  mood  of  things;  but 
as  we  look  back  now  it  already  seems  far-away 


and  strange,  and  we  feel  as  if  we  had  survived  J>tewn0on'0 
an  epidemic.  The  world  had  brooded  on  the  Rttitttbe  to 
mystery  of  existence  until  it  was  tired  out. 
Long  and  stern  had  the  struggle  been;  no 
wonder  the  great  labouring  heart  of  the  age 
was  weary.  As  long  ago  as  1833  Carlyle,  in  true 
prophetic  spirit,  had  anticipated  the  stress  and 
conflict,  and  had  hurled  at  it  his  own  character- 
istic solution.  "Strangely  enough,"  he  makes 
Teufelsdrb'ckh  say  of  his  spiritual  troubles,  "I 
lived  in  a  continual,  indefinite,  pining  fear ;  trem- 
ulous, pusillanimous,  apprehensive  of  I  knew 
not  what ;  it  seemed  as  if  all  things  in  the  Heav- 
ens above  and  the  Earth  beneath  would  hurt 
me ;  as  if  the  Heavens  and  the  Earth  were  but 
boundlessjaws  of  a  devouring  monster,  wherein 
I,  palpitating,  waited  to  be  devoured.  —Full  of 
such  humour,  and  perhaps  themiserablestman 
in  the  whole  French  Capital  or  Suburbs,  was  I, 
one  sultry  Dog-day,  after  much  perambulation, 
toiling  along  the  dirty  little  Rue  Saint-Thomas 
de  1'Enfer,  among  civic  rubbish  enough,  in  a 
close  atmosphere,  and  over  pavements  hot  as 
Nebuchadnezzar's  Furnace;  whereby  doubt- 
less my  spirits  were  little  cheered ;  when,  all  at 
once,  there  rose  a  Thought  in  me,  and  I  asked 
myself:  'What  art  thou  afraid  of?  Wherefore, 
like  a  coward,  dost  thou  forever  pip  and  pimper, 
and  go  cowering  and  trembling?  Despicable  bi- 
ped !  what  is  the  sum-total  of  the  worst  that  lies 
before  thee?  Death?  Well,  Death;  and  say  the 
pangs  of  Tophet  too,  and  all  that  the  Devil  and 
Man  may,  will  or  can  do  against  thee !  Hast  thou 
not  a  heart;  canst  thou  not  suffer  whatsoever 

7 


it  be;  and,  as  a  Child  of  Freedom,  though  out- 
flt titttbc  to  cast,  trample  Tophet  itself  under  thy  feet,  while 
it  consumes  thee  ?  Let  it  come,  then ;  I  will  meet 
it  and  defy  it ! '  And  as  I  so  thought,  there  rushed 
like  a  stream  of  fire  over  my  whole  soul ;  and  I 
shook  base  Fear  away  from  me  forever.  I  was 
strong,  of  unknown  strength ;  a  spirit,  almost 
a  god.  Ever  from  that  time,  the  temper  of  my 
misery  was  changed :  not  Fear  or  whining  Sor- 
row was  it,  but  Indignation  and  grim  fire-eyed 
Defiance." 

Great  fierce  words  these ;  but  they  are  not  so 
much  a  solution  as  a  gage  of  battle.  There  is 
nothing  settling  or  reposeful  in  them.  They  can 
issue  in  an  Everlasting  No,  or  in  a  Yea  so 
truculent  as  to  seem  like  a  perpetual  quarrel 
with  the  order  of  things,  but  not  in  peace  or 
acquiescent  joy.  And  this  mood  of  defiance  is 
just  as  wearing,  it  just  as  surely  brings  spirit- 
ual fatigue  and  depression,  as  does  doubt  or 
fear.  It  is  not  the  stable  equilibrium  of  the  soul ; 
it  is  in  fact  only  another  phase  of  that  same 
stress  and  strain  under  which  our  age  has  so 
sadly  laboured. 

From  such  a  tension  as  this  a  reaction  sooner 
or  later  is  inevitable.  And  it  is  fortunate,  when 
the  reaction  comes,  if  the  determining  influence 
of  it,  the  pioneer  spirit,  guide  it  in  natural  ways, 
not  as  revolution  and  sour  lawlessness  but  as 
uplift  and  enrichment.  To  have  done  this,  to 
have  been  a  leading  spirit  in  making  a  great 
reaction  sane  and  sweet,  is  Stevenson's  incal- 
culable service  to  his  age.  It  was  not  in  protest 
but  in  the  spontaneous  joy  of  living,  not  in  re- 
8 


bellion  against  past  or  present  but  in  the  whole- 
hearted  desire  to  add  to  the  wealth  of  exis- 
tence,  that  he  gave  to  the  world  his  exquisite 
essays  and  adventure  stories.  All  that  was  es- 
tablished he  was  content  to  let  be,  and  to  build 
upon.  "New  truth,"  he  says,  "is  only  useful  to 
supplement  the  old ;  rough  truth  is  only  wanted 
to  expand,  not  to  destroy,  our  civil  and  often 
elegant  conventions."  He  did  not  set  out  to  rev- 
olutionize men's  attitude  to  life ;  it  is  doubtful 
if  he  knew  how  much  he  was  doing.  But  some- 
how forthwith  the  tension  was  relieved,  and  be- 
fore they  knew  it  those  melancholy  souls  who 
had  brooded  over  knotty  problems  of  heaven 
and  earth  until  they  ached  with  the  strain,  found 
themselves  deep  in  a  boy's  book  of  adventure 
and  treasure  hunting  which  was  restful  and  de- 
lightful j  ust  because  it  contained  no  nice  balanc- 
ing of  motives,  no  calculation  of  moral  chances, 
and  no  conscience  at  all.  Here  was  the  timely 
offset  to  a  literature  which,  keeping  to  its  old 
formulas  long  after  their  first  poignancy  was 
gone,  was  beginning  to  run  twaddle.  It  was 
a  return  to  run-wild  elemental  nature,  to  the 
stratum  below  the  conventionalisms  and  arti- 
ficialities of  life ;  and  it  was  made  in  the  health- 
iest, least-disturbing  way  possible;  not  by  de- 
nial or  even  propaganda,  not  by  a  picnic  return 
to  nature  like  Rousseau's,  but  by  simply  hark- 
ing back  to  the  buoyant  youthfulness  that  still 
survives  in  all  of  us,— das  Ewigjugendliche. 
In  youth,  and  in  the  spirit  of  youthfulness,  we 
dare  to  let  our  blood  bound  and  our  untor- 
mented  conscience  carry  off  the  experiences 

9 


J)tewfl6on'6  that  come.  We  trust  ourselves  to  the  impulses 
to  of  a  period  that  has  not  yet  become  morbid 
and  introspective.  Full  of  energy  this  morning 
spirit  is,  but  it  is  the  energy  of  a  large  and  joy- 
ous scale  of  living;  a  noble  manhood-energy 
which  is  its  own  excuse  for  being.  Such  was 
the  vital  truth  that  Stevenson  was  concerned 
to  set  forth ;  and  no  lesson  ever  came  in  better 
time. 

The  first  impression  this  makes  upon  us  is  that 
of  simplifying  things.  It  bids  us  come  out  of  the 
heat  and  the  worry,  and  let  ourselves  enjoy. 
"We  are  in  such  haste,"  he  says  in  his  essay 
on  Walking  Tours,  "to  be  doing,  to  be  writing, 
to  be  gathering  gear,  to  make  our  voice  audi- 
ble a  moment  in  the  derisive  silence  of  eternity, 
that  we  forget  that  one  thing,  of  which  these 
are  but  the  parts  —  namely,  to  live.  We  fall  in 
love,  we  drink  hard,  we  run  to  and  fro  upon  the 
earth  like  frightened  sheep.  And  now  you  are 
to  ask  yourself  if,  when  all  is  done,  you  would 
not  have  been  better  to  sit  by  the  fire  at  home, 
and  be  happy  thinking.  To  sit  still  and  contem- 
plate, —  to  remember  the  faces  of  women  with- 
out desire,  to  be  pleased  by  the  great  deeds 
of  men  without  envy,  to  be  everything  and 
everywhere  in  sympathy,  and  yet  content  to 
remain  where  and  what  you  are  —  is  not  this 
to  know  both  wisdom  and  virtue,  and  to  dwell 
with  happiness?  After  all,  it  is  not  they  who 
carry  flags,  but  they  who  look  upon  it  from  a 
private  chamber,  who  have  the  fun  of  the  pro- 
cession." 

That  life  is  a  thing  to  be  lived,  not  brooded  over ; 
10 


that  the  net  result  of  it,  as  its  problems  are  met,  Jtfewneon'e 
should  be  joy  and  confidence,  not  introspection  Jfttitufce  to 
and  fear; — this  is  the  medicine  that  Stevenson 
would  apply  to  the  spiritual  fatigue  of  his  time. 
For  a  man  so  to  do  is  to  be  master  of  himself 
and  his  station  and  his  fate;  it  is  venturing  to 
take  the  beauty  and  the  promise  of  the  present 
as  true  and  as  hiding  no  treachery  for  the  time 
or  eternity  to  come. 

A  man  who  holds  such  a  view  of  life  as  this 
must  make  his  reckoning  with  the  current 
ideas  of  things,  evolved  as  these  are  from  the 
desperate  earnestness  of  our  science  and  phi- 
losophy, and  clouded  over  by  the  mystery  that 
fills  this  unintelligible  world.  Nor  is  Stevenson 
wanting  here.  He  is  not  at  all  out  of  touch  with 
this  scientific  age,  or  with  the  closest  and  most 
searching  study  of  all  its  conditions;  but  sci- 
ence, he  is  well  aware,  has  its  place,  where  it 
may  attend  to  one  department  of  life,  but  not 
to  all,  and  not  to  what  is  really  inner  and  vital. 
His  centre  and  citadel  is  a  place  that  science 
can  neither  invade  nor  enrich,  a  place  where  all 
the  life,  and  not  the  brain  alone,  has  its  world. 
"There  are  moments,"  he  says,  in  his  essay 
on  Pan's  Pipes,  "when  the  mind  refuses  to  be 
satisfied  with  evolution,  and  demands  a  rud- 
dier presentation  of  the  sum  of  man's  expe- 
rience. Sometimes  the  mood  is  brought  about 
by  laughter  at  the  humorous  side  of  life.  .  .  . 
Sometimes  it  comes  by  the  spirit  of  delight,  and 
sometimes  by  the  spirit  of  terror.  At  least,  there 
will  always  be  hours  when  we  refuse  to  be  put 
off  by  the  feint  of  explanation,  nicknamed  sci- 

II 


'6  ence;  and  demand  instead  some  palpitating 
Jfttitttbe  to  image  of  our  estate,  that  shall  represent  the 
troubled  and  uncertain  element  in  which  we 
dwell,  and  satisfy  reason  by  the  means  of  art. 
Science  writes  of  the  world  as  if  with  the  cold 
finger  of  a  starfish ;  it  is  all  true ;  but  what  is 
it  when  compared  to  the  reality  of  which  it  dis- 
courses? where  hearts  beat  high  in  April,  and 
death  strikes,  and  hills  totter  in  the  earthquake, 
and  there  is  a  glamour  over  all  the  objects  of 
sight,  and  a  thrill  in  all  noises  for  the  ear,  and 
Romance  herself  has  made  her  dwelling  among 
men?" 

The  same  with  philosophy.  Brought  into  the 
presence  of  life,  as  life  was  meant  to  be,  all  its 
laboured  explanations  shrivel  and  dry  up,  leav- 
ing us  with  the  feeling  that  it  never  saw  the 
reality  of  its  object  at  all.  What  is  life,  when 
all  is  said?  and  what  shall  we  do  with  it?  This 
is  how  Stevenson  estimates  philosophy  in  his 
essay  on  JEs  Triplex:  "All  literature,  from 
Job  and  Omar  Khayyam  to  Thomas  Carlyle  or 
Walt  Whitman,  is  but  an  attempt  to  look  upon 
the  human  state  with  such  largeness  of  view 
as  shall  enable  us  to  rise  from  the  considera- 
tion of  living  to  the  Definition  of  Life.  And  our 
sages  give  us  about  the  best  satisfaction  in 
their  power  when  they  say  that  it  is  a  vapour, 
or  a  show,  or  made  out  of  the  same  stuff  with 
dreams.  Philosophy,  in  its  more  rigid  sense, 
has  been  at  the  same  work  for  ages ;  and  after 
a  myriad  bald  heads  have  wagged  over  the 
problem,  and  piles  of  words  have  been  heaped 
one  upon  another  into  dry  and  cloudy  volumes 

12 


without  end,  philosophy  has  the  honour  of  lay-  Jtfewneon'tf 
ing  before  us,  with  modest  pride,  her  contri-  JTttitu&e  to 
bution  towards  the  subject:  that  life  is  a  Per- 
manent  Possibility  of  Sensation.  Truly  a  fine 
result!  A  man  may  very  well  love  beef,  or  hunt- 
ing1, or  a  woman ;  but  surely,  surely,  not  a  Per- 
manent Possibility  of  Sensation !  He  may  be 
afraid  of  a  precipice,  or  a  dentist,  or  a  large 
enemy  with  a  club,  or  even  an  undertaker's 
man ;  but  not  certainly  of  abstract  death.  We 
may  trick  with  the  word  life  in  its  dozen  senses 
until  we  are  weary  of  tricking ;  we  may  argue 
in  terms  of  all  the  philosophies  on  earth ;  but 
one  fact  remains  true  throughout— that  we  do 
not  love  life,  in  the  sense  that  we  are  greatly 
preoccupied  about  its  conservation;  that  we 
do  not,  properly  speaking,  love  life  at  all,  but 
living." 

If  this  view  of  life  inveighs  against  the  abys- 
mal interpretations  propounded  by  uninspired 
intellect,  none  the  less  also  it  is  beyond  the 
maladies  of  intellect ;  and  herein  largely  con- 
sists its  tonic  bracing  quality  for  its  age.  For 
it  life  is  a  good  in  itself,  centred  in  its  own  joys, 
its  own  sufficient  resources ;  we  need  not  always 
be  looking  round  the  corner  for  a  hidden  pit- 
fall, or  asking  whether  life  is  worth  living,  or 
quarrelling  with  the  untoward  circumstances 
which  are  so  slow  to  bring  its  felicities  from 
outside.  It  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth;  let 
the  spirit  be  sound,  and  there  is  no  occasion  for 
depression  or  fatigue  over  its  problems.  In  the 
same  essay  last  quoted  from,  Stevenson  thus 
laughs  down  the  shallowness  that  sees  only 

13 


J>tewn60ffe  gloom  ahead:  "There  is  a  great  deal  of  very 
Rttitttbe  to  vile  nonsense  talked  upon  both  sides  of  the 
matter:  tearing  divines  reducing  life  to  the 
dimensions  of  a  mere  funeral  procession,  so 
short  as  to  be  hardly  decent;  and  melancholy 
unbelievers  yearning  for  the  tomb  as  if  it  were 
a  world  too  far  away.  Both  sides  must  feel  a 
little  ashamed  of  their  performances  now  and 
again  when  they  draw  in  their  chairs  to  dinner. 
Indeed,  a  good  meal  and  a  bottle  of  wine  is  an 
answer  to  most  standard  works  upon  the  ques- 
tion. When  a  man's  heart  warms  to  his  viands, 
he  forgets  a  great  deal  of  sophistry,  and  soars 
into  a  rosy  zone  of  contemplation."  In  the  same 
vein,  in  his  essay  on  Walt  Whitman,  he  por- 
trays the  torpor  of  the  age,  and  in  such  terms 
that  we  can  see  he  felt  upon  himself  the  bur- 
den of  a  mission  against  it.  "We  are  accus- 
tomed nowadays,"  he  says,  "to  a  great  deal  of 
puling  over  the  circumstances  in  which  we  are 
placed.  The  great  refinement  of  many  poetical 
gentlemen  has  rendered  them  practically  unfit 
for  the  jostling  and  ugliness  of  life,  and  they 
record  their  unfitness  at  considerable  length. 
The  bold  and  awful  poetry  of  Job's  complaint 
produces  too  many  flimsy  imitators ;  for  there 
is  always  something  consolatory  in  grandeur, 
but  the  symphony  transposed  for  the  piano  be- 
comes hysterically  sad.  This  literature  of  woe, 
as  Whitman  calls  it,  . . .  is  in  many  ways  a  most 
humiliating  and  sickly  phenomenon.  Young 
gentlemen  with  three  or  four  hundred  a  year 
of  private  means  look  down  from  a  pinnacle  of 
doleful  experience  on  all  the  grown  and  hearty 


men  who  have  dared  to  say  a  good  word  for  life 
since  the  beginning  of  the  world.  There  is  no  flttitube  to 
prophet  but  the  melancholy  Jacques,  and  the 
blue  devils  dance  on  all  our  literary  wires."  In 
the  words  that  follow  these  we  get  a  glimpse  of 
the  impulse  that  has  set  him  into  this  somewhat 
unusual  vein  of  invective ;  it  is  his  impulse,  as 
one  who  sees  and  can  guide,  to  meet  the  respon- 
sibilities of  his  endowments  and  make  a  better 
spirit  of  things  prevail.  "  It  would  be  a  poor  ser- 
vice to  spread  culture,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "if 
this  be  its  result,  among  the  comparatively  inno- 
cent and  cheerful  ranks  of  men.  When  our  little 
poets  have  to  be  sent  to  look  at  the  ploughman 
and  learn  wisdom,  we  must  be  careful  how  we 
tamper  with  our  ploughmen.  Where  a  man  in 
not  the  best  of  circumstances  preserves  com- 
posure of  mind,  and  relishes  ale  and  tobacco, 
and  his  wife  and  children,  in  the  intervals  of 
dull  and  unremunerative  labour;  where  a  man 
in  this  predicament  can  afford  a  lesson  by  the 
way  to  what  are  called  his  intellectual  supe- 
riors, there  is  plainly  something  to  be  lost,  as 
well  as  something  to  be  gained,  by  teaching 
him  to  think  differently.  It  is  better  to  leave  him 
as  he  is  than  to  teach  him  whining.  It  is  better 
that  he  should  go  without  the  cheerful  lights 
of  culture,  if  cheerless  doubt  and  paralyzing 
sentimentalism  are  to  be  the  consequence.  Let 
us,  by  all  means,  fight  against  that  hide-bound 
stolidity  of  sensation  and  sluggishness  of  mind 
which  blurs  and  decolourizes  for  poor  natures 
the  wonderful  pageant  of  consciousness;  let  us 
teach  people,  as  much  as  we  can,  to  enjoy,  and 

15 


Jrtewneon'6  they  will  learn  for  themselves  to  sympathize; 
JttHtube  to  but  let  us  see  to  it,  above  all,  that  we  give  these 
-jtife  lessons  in  a  brave,  vivacious  note,  and  build  the 

man  up  in  courage  while  we  demolish  its  sub- 
stitute, indifference." 

Here  then  we  may  sum  up  the  influence  of  that 
wholesome  reaction  which  Stevenson  had  a 
pioneer's  part  in  bringing  to  his  troubled  age. 
Addressing  itself  to  the  same  spiritual  malaise 
that  Teufelsdrockh  felt  so  many  years  ago, 
and  that  has  so  lingered  in  the  heart  of  the 
age  since,  it  asks,  not  now  in  truculence  but  in 
courage  and  tender  sympathy,  the  same  ques- 
tion that  brought  Carlyle  to  his  senses:  "What 
art  thou  afraid  of?"  and  then,  going  on  to  the 
answer,  instead  of  reducing  life  to  a  grim  de- 
fiance of  Tophet  and  snarling  at  the  devil,  sets 
man  with  hope  and  joy  and  the  morning  purity 
of  youth  before  "the  wonderful  pageant  of  con- 
sciousness," to  use  and  assimilate  the  glories 
of  an  intensely  interesting  world.  Get  the  en- 
ergetic spirit  of  man  in  that  attitude,  and  what 
is  there  to  fear  or  distrust,  what  is  there  to  in- 
duce this  torpor  and  fatigue,  after  all? 
I  need  not  remind  you  again  how  seasonable 
this  is,  and  what  a  tonic  it  has  been  to  these 
later  days.  We  have  only  to  think  how  the  em- 
phasis of  things  has  shifted:  how  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward  and  her  imitators,  with  their  un- 
easy exploitation  of  religious  enigmas,  have  all 
the  irksomeness  of  a  "back  number" ;  how  Hall 
Caine's  Christian,  when  we  compare  him  with 
the  unspoken  ideal  of  a  sturdy  sense,  is  con- 
temned as  a  Christian  freak  and  fool;  how  Kip- 
16 


ling  and  Hope  and  Weyman,  with  their  frank  J>tewn0on'6 
return  to  healthy  animalism  and  the  scarce  re-  J^ttitttbe  to 
strained  impulses  of  the  natural  man,  are  call- 
ing  forth  such  an  answering  chord  of  senti- 
ment ;  how  old  Omar  Khayyam  is  living  anew, 
not  so  much  from  his  agnosticism  and  his  dis- 
position to  say  audacious  things  to  God,  as 
from  his  truce  to  theological  subtilties  and  his 
hearty  acceptance  of  this  present  life  and  its 
good  cheer.  From  these  random  instances  we 
can  judge  what  is  coming  to  be  the  prevailing 
mood  and  sentiment  of  the  time.  It  is  to  the 
spirit  what  our  vogue  of  athletics  is  to  the  body: 
it  starts  a  genial  warmth  and  suggests  a  rub- 
down  and  a  hearty  meal ;  and  from  it  we  turn 
to  our  work  with  a  sense  of  buoyancy  and  light- 
ness, and  with  a  readiness  to  meet  all  the  un- 
certainties of  the  future,  and  have  no  fear. 
Now  of  course  I  am  not  disposed  to  ascribe  all 
this  to  Stevenson.  But  he  was,  as  I  have  re- 
peatedly said,  a  pioneer  spirit  in  it,  with  the 
advantage  that  his  utterance  came  just  at  the 
crest  of  the  time,  when  a  great  wearied  heart 
was  ready  for  it.  Another  thing  too  cannot  be 
spared  from  the  account.  His  wonderful  gift  of 
expression  made  the  definition  of  the  new  move- 
ment vital  and  operative  in  those  minds  which 
respond  to  the  thrill  of  language,  that  finest 
vehicle  of  spiritual  communion.  On  the  author- 
class  especially,  whose  activities  are  concerned 
with  moving  the  mass  of  men  by  language,  he 
wrought  as  acknowledged  master  and  model. 
"While  he  lived,"  said  Quiller-Couch  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  "he  moved  men  to  put  their 

17 


J>tewiT60n'6  utmost  even  into  writings  that  quite  certainly 
Rttitttbe  to  would  never  meet  his  eye.  Surely  another  age 
will  wonder  over  this  curiosity  of  letters  —  that 
for  five  years  the  needle  of  literary  endeavour 
in  Great  Britain  has  quivered  towards  a  little 
island  in  the  South  Pacific,  as  to  its  magnetic 
pole."  A  man  who  possesses  such  an  influence 
is  not  the  arbiter  of  style  alone.  If,  as  Edmund 
Gosse  called  him,  he  is  "the  most  inspiriting, 
the  most  fascinating  human  being  that  I  have 
known,"  and  if  that  fascination  glamours  not 
only  his  personality  but  the  whole  of  life  as  he  in- 
terprets and  lives  it,  this  also  will  have  its  power, 
this  glow  of  health  and  insight  also,  through 
those  whose  utterance  in  turn  is  thrilled  by  it, 
will  work  its  work  in  the  age.  By  its  intrinsic 
charm  it  has  placed  itself  so  as  to  control  the 
channels  of  uplift  and  power. 

ill 

URNING  now  to  the  salient  ele- 
ments in  Stevenson's  attitude  to 
life,  with  their  points  of  outset 
in  his  personality,  we  note  as  the 
most  outstanding  element  the 
view,  or  tacit  tenet,  which  in  Ste- 
venson's disciples  and  successors  has  assumed 
most  the  character  of  a  reaction,  and  which  ac- 
cordingly has  wrought  to  traverse  a  venerable 
religious  presupposition.  Stevenson  freely  as- 
sumes, though  still  as  a  balanced  sanity  and 
temperance,  what  in  some  of  the  less-grounded 
spirits  has  become  more  brutal  and  glaring, 
—that  the  natural  man,  the  man  who  has  a 
18 


complete  outfit  of  instincts  and  appetites  im- 
planted  at  birth,  has  rights  which  we  are  bound  Jtttitnbe  to 
to  respect  and  maintain,  apart  from  the  dis- 
count  that  we  must  reckon  for  depravity  and 
the  duty  of  spiritualizing  him  by  regeneration. 
He  builds,  in  other  words,  on  the  basal  assump- 
tion that  man  is  in  very  fair  working-order 
before  the  clergy  have  got  hold  of  him.  This  as- 
sumption was  just  the  thing  that  a  conscience- 
morbid  age  would  most  naturally  grasp  at,  and 
perhaps,  by  reason  of  the  reactive  element  in  it, 
coarsen  into  a  sort  of  antinomianism.  Not  so, 
however,  Stevenson.  In  him  the  spirit  of  the 
natural  man  is  still  a  beauty  and  a  grace,  like 
the  grace  of  youth  and  innocence ;  healthy  too, 
and  racy  of  the  soil.  In  his  relation  to  that  idea 
of  the  natural  man  which  was  rooted  in  his  na- 
tive tradition,  he  has  an  analogue  in  our  Ameri- 
can literature.  As  our  own  Hawthorne  gave 
forth  his  heritage  of  Puritanism  not  as  an  aus- 
terity but  as  a  kind  of  fragrance,  so,  we  may 
say,  Stevenson  distils  into  a  fragrance  the  in- 
herited breath  and  influence  of  Scotch  Presby- 
terianism.  He  neither  denies  nor  accepts  origi- 
nal sin  and  depravity;  he  simply  ignores  them, 
as  if  the  man  for  whom  he  lives  and  writes  were 
to  reckon  himself  dead  to  them.  It  is  not  so  much 
that  he  has  broken  with  the  austere  tenets  of 
Calvinism,  as  that,  like  the  author  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  he  is  resolved  to  leave  the  ru- 
diments of  the  theory  of  life,  such  as  dealings 
with  sin  and  conversion,  and  considering  these 
disposed  of  once  for  all,  go  on  unto  perfection. 
His  natural  unforced  man,  then,  is  not  a  mere 

19 


J>tewn00n'6  creature  of  instincts  and  appetites,  like  a  finer 
to  brute,  but  a  being  in  whom  the  goodly  heritage 
of  Christian  centuries  is  so  ingrained  that  he 
may  trust  himself  to  follow  his  impulses  with- 
out thought,  while  he  lives  his  nobler  life  as  to 
the  manner  born.  Surely  there  is  nothing  revo- 
lutionary in  this.  It  merely  assumes  that  man- 
hood has  resources  of  its  own  to  utilize,  be- 
yond settling  the  preliminary  question  how  to 
get  manhood.  Instead  of  taking  up  his  station, 
as  Evangelism  so  long  has  done,  before  the 
threshold  of  the  renewed  life,  he  occupies  a 
place  so  far  beyond  the  entrance  that  the  man 
may  enjoy  the  freedom  and  the  scenery  of  that 
region,  and  explore  its  wealth  of  beauty,  as  a 
matter  of  course. 

All  this  is  consistent  and  continuous  with  that 
higher  trend  of  life  commonly  called  the  spirit- 
ual; it  has  all  the  organs  and  proclivities  for 
living  the  life  of  the  spirit.  But  its  power  in 
literature  to-day  is  mainly  on  the  elemental 
side,  the  side  which  hitherto  has  had  its  rights 
for  the  most  part  under  ecclesiastical  protest. 
There  is  something  free  and  bracing  in  the  dis- 
covery that  Calvin,  in  his  theory  of  total  deprav- 
ity, overlooked  some  things  in  the  penumbra 
of  totality  which  may  be  so  enjoyed  as  to  leave 
the  soul  intact ;  and  we  must  give  the  new  feel- 
ing time  to  adjust  itself  to  its  wider  range.  We 
may  be  sure  that  when  the  various  excesses  of 
coltishness  are  corrected  much  good  will  ac- 
crue to  the  body  cogitative  from  it. 
In  the  whole  spiritual  movement  of  which  this 
is  a  part  Mr.  James  Lane  Allen  discerns  a  vi- 
20 


rility,  a  largeness,  a  deepening,  which  he  names  J)tewtt6on'0 
the  Masculine  Principle  coming  to  expression  flttitttbe  to 
in  our  literature.  "It  is  striking  out  boldly," 
he  says,  "for  larger  things,  —larger  areas  of 
adventure,  larger  spaces  of  history,  with  freer 
movements  through  both:  it  would  have  the 
wings  of  a  bird  in  the  air,  and  not  the  wings  of 
a  bird  on  a  woman's  hat. .  . .  And  if,  finally,  it 
has  any  one  characteristic  more  discernible 
than  another,  it  is  the  movement  away  from  the 
summits  of  life  downward  toward  the  bases 
of  life ;  from  the  heights  of  civilization  to  the 
primitive  springs  of  action ;  from  the  thin-aired 
regions  of  consciousness  which  are  ruled  over 
by  Tact  to  the  underworld  of  unconsciousness 
where  are  situated  the  mighty  workshops,  and 
where  toils  on  forever  the  Cyclopean  youth,  In- 
stinct." 

All  this  we  may  regard  as  in  a  sense  the  pres- 
ent-day phase  of  the  answer  to  Teufelsdrockh's 
question,  "What  art  thou  afraid  of?"  And  per- 
haps the  age  will  bear  it  if  for  once  we  do  leave 
our  inveterate  presupposition  of  man's  innate 
corruption  unregarded,  and  dare  to  let  self-ex- 
pression, trained  as  it  is  through  a  long  growth 
of  ennobling  and  Christianizing  ideas,  be  large 
and  untrammelled.  It  is  well  at  least  to  know, 
if  we  may,  that  when  left  to  his  natural  self  man 
may  signify  something  more  than  tobacco  and 
gin  and  lust,— that  there  are,  at  the  bases  of 
his  nature,  thoroughly  sound  and  respectable 
traits,  after  all. 

Of  this  natural  manhood  the  note  which  Ste- 
venson has  most  at  heart  and  strikes  most 

21 


Stevcneon'6  constantly  is  its  wholeness  and  wholesome- 
to  ness,  that  character  which,  being  its  own  great 
sufficiency  and  reward,  can  trust  itself  soul- 
forward  and  without  apology  to  its  own  self- 
expression.  Life  is  not  a  thing  to  buy,  but  to 
enjoy  as  an  ultimate  fact.  It  desires  no  better 
thing  outside.  A  kingdom  of  heaven  which  is 
not  a  present  thing,  realizable  in  all  its  glory 
within,  has  no  appeal  to  him.  "The  view  taught 
at  the  present  time,"  he  says  in  his  Lay  Mor- 
als, "seems  to  me  to  want  greatness;  and  the 
dialect  in  which  alone  it  can  be  intelligibly  ut- 
tered is  not  the  dialect  of  my  soul.  It  is  a  sort 
of  postponement  of  life ;  nothing  quite  is,  but 
something  different  is  to  be;  we  are  to  keep 
our  eyes  upon  the  indirect  from  the  cradle  to 
the  grave.  We  are  to  regulate  our  conduct  not 
by  desire,  but  by  a  politic  eye  upon  the  future ; 
and  to  value  acts  as  they  will  bring  us  money 
or  good  opinion ;  as  they  will  bring  us,  in  one 
word,  profit.  .  .  .  We  are  to  live  just  now  as 
well  as  we  can,  but  scrape  at  last  into  heaven, 
where  we  shall  be  good.  We  are  to  worry 
through  the  week  in  a  lay,  disreputable  way, 
but,  to  make  matters  square,  live  a  different 
life  on  Sunday."  Such  a  divided  life  as  is  here 
described,  such  commercial  balancing  of  im- 
pulses and  convictions,  desires  and  conven- 
tions, incurred  his  heartiest  antipathy.  For  al- 
most anything  else  he  could  make  allowance ; 
but  this  invaded  the  very  citadel  of  life,  where 
a  man  must  reckon  with  the  unity  of  his  own 
manhood.  "If  we  were  to  conceive  a  perfect 
man,"  he  says,  "it  should  be  one  who  was  never 

22 


torn  between  conflicting  impulses,  but  who,  on 
the  absolute  consent  of  all  his  parts  and  facul-  ^ttitube  to 
ties,  submitted  in  every  action  of  his  life  to  a  |£ife 
self-dictation  as  absolute  and  unreasoned  as 
that  which  bids  him  love  one  woman  and  be 
true  to  her  till  death." 

In  this  absoluteness  of  surrender  to  the  man- 
hood current  within  us  Stevenson  has  taken 
us  far  from  the  total-depravity  school,  with  its 
nervous  fear  of  giving  human  nature  free  play. 
And  if  he  sets  the  nature  moving  according  to 
its  own  free  bent,  and  all  together,  then  its  direc- 
tion must  be  right,  for  there  is  no  part  left  to 
apply  the  brakes  if  it  is  headed  wrong.  Trained 
as  we  are  in  some  reminiscence  of  the  same 
school,  we  are  not  likely  to  forget  this,  or  to  let 
Stevenson  do  so.  Nor  does  he  forget  it.  Herein 
it  is  that  he  is  the  safest  and  most  truly  Chris- 
tian of  guides,  that  he  never  loses  sight  of  the 
highest  ends;  so  high  that  the  warring  region 
of  pettiness  and  passion  is  left  far  below.  Both 
whip  and  rein,  in  his  programme  of  life,  are  in 
the  hands  not  of  the  senses  but  of  the  spirit; 
his  natural  man,  this  latest  birth  of  a  rising  and 
refining  evolution,  is  as  it  were  the  Son  of  man. 
Therefore  the  whole  normal  man  is  sound  and 
sacred.  "All  that  is  in  the  man  in  the  larger 
sense,"  he  says  in  this  same  work  on  Lay  Mor- 
als, "what  we  call  impression  as  well  as  what 
we  call  intuition,  so  far  as  my  argument  looks, 
we  must  accept.  It  is  not  wrong  to  desire  food, 
or  exercise,  or  beautiful  surroundings,  or  the 
love  of  sex,  or  interest  which  is  the  food  of  the 
mind.  All  these  are  craved;  all  these  should 

23 


^tewneon'6  be  craved;  to  none  of  these  in  itself  does  the 
to  soul  demur;  where  there  comes  an  undeniable 
want,  we  recognize  a  demand  of  nature.  Yet  we 
know  that  these  natural  demands  may  be  su- 
perseded ;  for  the  demands  which  are  common 
to  mankind  make  but  a  shadowy  consideration 
in  comparison  to  the  demands  of  the  individual 
soul." 

Superseded,  then,  these  elemental  desires  may 
be?  Yes;  it  is  so,— superseded,  not  starved  nor 
pampered ;  conquered  neither  by  selfish  indul- 
gence nor  selfish  asceticism,  but  by  a  higher 
and  harmonizing  principle  which  resides  in  the 
spirit,  and  enables  the  man  to  live  as  a  whole, 
with  no  schism  between  lower  and  higher. 
"There  is  another  way,"  Stevenson  goes  on  to 
say,  "to  supersede  them  by  reconciliation,  in 
which  the  soul  and  all  the  faculties  and  senses 
pursue  a  common  route  and  share  in  one  de- 
sire." Then  after  exemplifying  this  reconcilia- 
tion from  common  experience,  he  sums  up: 
"Now  to  me  this  seems  a  type  of  that  right- 
ness  which  the  soul  demands.  It  demands  that 
we  shall  not  live  alternately  with  our  oppos- 
ing tendencies  in  continual  seesaw  of  passion 
and  disgust,  but  seek  some  path  on  which  the 
tendencies  shall  no  longer  oppose,  but  serve 
each  other  to  a  common  end.  It  demands  that 
we  shall  not  pursue  broken  ends,  but  great 
and  comprehensive  purposes,  in  which  soul 
and  body  may  unite  like  notes  in  a  harmonious 
chord. . . .  The  soul  demands  unity  of  purpose, 
not  the  dismemberment  of  man ;  it  seeks  to  roll 
up  all  his  strength  and  sweetness,  all  his  pas- 
24 


sion  and  wisdom,  into  one,  and  make  of  him  a  J>tcvni eon's 
perfect  man  exulting  in  perfection."  Jfttitttbe  to 

A  man  of  Stevenson's  spiritual  antecedents 
could  not  hold  such  a  conclusion  as  this  idly,  or 
ignore  the  elements  that  make  against  it.  With 
a  great  sum  must  he  purchase  his  freedom. 
There  is  the  fact  of  sin  to  be  reckoned  with. 
There  are  the  pains  of  accusing  conscience  and 
unrealized  ideals.  These  are  the  discount  side 
of  the  book,  the  prose  reality  to  set  over  against 
our  dreams.  And  Stevenson  has  reckoned  with 
them.  It  is,  in  fact,  when  he  is  dealing  with 
these  stern  facts  of  life  that  he  strikes  at  once 
his  most  exalted  and  most  practical  note.  That 
free  manhood  which  he  has  so  much  at  heart 
is  to  move  in  a  region  to  which  the  evil  we  would 
shun  is  absolutely  alien ;  no  more  entering  our 
thought,  as  a  necessary  ingredient  of  life,  than 
would  arson  or  highway  robbery.  I  have  spoken 
of  this  already;  it  is  the  Apostle  Paul's  idea  of 
reckoning  ourselves  dead  to  sin,  translated  into 
modern  idiom.  "It  is  probable,"  Stevenson  says 
in  his  Christmas  Sermon,  "that  nearly  all  who 
think  of  conduct  at  all,  think  of  it  too  much ;  it 
is  certain  we  all  think  too  much  of  sin.  We  are 
not  damned  for  doing  wrong,  but  for  not  do- 
ing right;  Christ  would  never  hear  of  negative 
morality;  thou  shalt  was  ever  his  word,  with 
which  he  superseded  thou  shalt  not.  To  make 
our  idea  of  morality  centre  on  forbidden  acts  is 
to  defile  the  imagination  and  to  introduce  into 
our  judgments  of  our  fellow-men  a  secret  ele- 
ment of  gusto.  If  a  thing  is  wrong  for  us,  we 
should  not  dwell  upon  the  thought  of  it;  or 

25 


we  shall  soon  dwell  upon  it  with  inverted  plea- 
to  sure. ...  A  man  may  have  a  flaw,  a  weakness, 
that  unfits  him  for  the  duties  of  life,  that  spoils 
his  temper,  that  threatens  his  integrity,  or  that 
betrays  him  into  cruelty.  It  has  to  be  conquered ; 
but  it  must  never  be  suffered  to  engross  his 
thoughts.  The  true  duties  lie  all  upon  the  far- 
ther side,  and  must  be  attended  to  with  a  whole 
mind  so  soon  as  this  preliminary  clearing  of 
the  decks  has  been  effected.  In  order  that  he 
may  be  kind  and  honest,  it  may  be  needful  he 
should  become  a  total  abstainer;  let  him  be- 
come so  then,  and  the  next  day  let  him  forget 
the  circumstance.  Trying  to  be  kind  and  hon- 
est will  require  all  his  thoughts;  a  mortified 
appetite  is  never  a  wise  companion ;  in  so  far 
as  he  has  had  to  mortify  an  appetite,  he  will 
still  be  the  worse  man ;  and  of  such  an  one  a 
great  deal  of  cheerfulness  will  be  required  in 
judging  life,  and  a  great  deal  of  humility  in  judg- 
ing others."  Just  such  sane  and  sensible  treat- 
ment he  applies  also  to  conscience,  in  his  Re- 
flection and  Remarks  on  Human  Life.  "Never 
allow  your  mind,"  he  says,  "to  dwell  on  your 
own  misconduct ;  that  is  ruin.  The  conscience 
has  morbid  sensibilities;  it  must  be  employed 
but  not  indulged,  like  the  imagination  or  the 
stomach.  Let  each  stab  suffice  for  the  occa- 
sion ;  to  play  with  this  spiritual  pain  turns  to 
penance ;  and  a  person  easily  learns  to  feel  good 
by  dallying  with  the  consciousness  of  having 
done  wrong.  Shut  your  eyes  hard  against  the 
recollection  of  your  sins.  Do  not  be  afraid,  you 
will  not  be  able  to  forget  them. . . .  The  study 
26 


of  conduct  has  to  do  with  grave  problems;  not  J>tewn6on'0 

every  action  should  be  higgled  over;  one  of  the  Jfttitttbe  to 

leading  virtues  therein  is  to  let  oneself  alone. 

But  if  you  make  it  your  chief  employment,  you 

are  sure  to  meddle  too  much.  This  is  the  great 

error  of  those  who  are  called  pious.  Although 

the  war  of  virtue  be  unending  except  with  life, 

hostilities  are  frequently  suspended,  and  the 

troops  go  into  winter  quarters;  but  the  pious 

will  not  profit  by  these  times  of  truce ;  where 

their  conscience  can  perceive  no  sin,  they  will 

find  a  sin  in  that  very  innocency;  and  so  they 

pervert,  to  their  annoyance,  those  seasons 

which  God  gives  to  us  for  repose  and  a  reward." 

iv 

|N  this  free-moving  life,  so  spon- 
taneous and  unforced  as  to  sug- 
gest the  unrestrained  natural 
man,  so  true  to  high  possibili- 
ties and  dead  to  baseness  as  to 
suggest  the  pure  freedom  of 
the  spirit,  there  is  one  comprehensive  mark 
of  health  and  perfect  function.  It  is  happy;  it 
moves  in  joy.  This  is  its  side  as  turned  to  its 
own  fulfilment  and  destiny,  the  music  it  makes 
with  all  its  strings  in  perfect  tune  and  harmony. 
And  because  it  is  happy,  it  is  a  source  and  radi- 
ator of  happiness ;  not  laying  austere  exactions 
on  men  but  smoothing  their  way  to  manhood. 
This  is  its  side  as  turned  to  the  world.  The  two 
sides  are  natural  complements  of  each  other. 
By  so  much  as  life  fails  of  happiness,  by  so  much 
an  alien  element  is  there,  a  limitation,  a  power- 

27 


^teveneon'6  consuming  friction,  which  ought  not  and  was 
to  never  meant  to  be.  By  so  much  as  it  fails  to  ra- 
diate  and  promote  happiness,  by  so  much  it  has 
missed  or  perverted  its  true  design  in  the  sum 
of  things.  The  sign  of  its  wholeness  is  a  free 
play  of  good  cheer.  Carlyle's  discovery  that  the 
lack  of  happiness  might  be  countervailed  by 
blessedness,  as  if  a  man  could  at  once  be  pro- 
foundly miserable  on  some  accounts  and  on 
others  be  profoundly  blissful,  —  his  sum-total 
of  life  being  thus  a  greater  or  less  balance  be- 
tween contradictory  currents,  —  was  entirely 
foreign  to  Stevenson's  ideal;  it  belonged,  in 
fact,  to  a  disturbed  and  divided  nature,  and  to 
a  man  who  was  eternally  thinking  of  himself. 
Such  a  man  Stevenson  most  emphatically  was 
not.  His  was  the  royal  wholeness  of  a  nature 
moving  all  together,  without  apology  or  evil 
discount.  He  had  not  to  think  of  self  but  to  be ; 
not  to  cipher  out  an  attitude  to  life  but  to  live ; 
not  even  to  appoint  himself  a  missionary  of  the 
doctrine  of  happiness  to  other  men,  like  those 
actors  who  posture  and  snigger  in  order  to  raise 
a  laugh,  but  simply  to  be  happy  and  make  that 
happiness,  with  its  solid  glow  of  heat,  its  own 
excuse  for  being.  Such  happiness  is  conta- 
gious; it  needs  no  bolstering  of  propaganda;  it 
awakens  echoes,  it  calls  out  responsive  cheer 
by  its  mere  self-evidencing  wholesomeness. 
This  happiness  in  Stevenson  was  more  than 
temperamental ;  it  had  based  itself  in  the  wise 
and  penetrative  spirit.  Nor  was  it  any  shal- 
low evasion  of  the  deeps  of  life ;  it  was  at  polar 
remove  from  the  mere  physical  well-being  of 
28 


a  gourmand,  or  the  glee  of  an  empty-headed 
dancer.  It  had  made  itself  good  against  too  Jfttttub?  to 
much  ill  health  for  that ;  and  underlying  it  were 
centuries  of  digested  thought  and  doctrine.  An 
efflorescence,  a  fruitage,  it  truly  was,  culminat- 
ing from  profound  strains  of  vital  meditation; 
it  was,  in  a  word,  Stevenson's  religion,  and  when 
we  consider  all  that  went  to  the  shaping  of  it, 
a  religion  fair  and  sufficient. 
As  to  its  point  of  outset  in  his  personality,  there 
is  not  wanting  to  it  a  certain  note  of  self-moni- 
tion, almost  of  belligerency,  as  if  he  felt  it  laid 
upon  him  to  work  out  what  he  calls  his  "great 
task  of  happiness  "  from  a  stubborn  experience ; 
the  spirit  of  him  rejoicing  to  overcome,  rejoic- 
ing the  more  as  the  foe  is  fiercer  and  stronger, 
yet  resolved  to  keep  the  pain  of  his  struggle 
from  others,  while  he  makes  himself,  and  him- 
self alone,  the  arena.  He  certainly  had  stern 
enough  reason  for  such  self-incitement;  and 
that  he  has  on  the  whole  so  successfully  trans- 
muted it  into  the  pure  outcome  of  rational  hap- 
piness is  what  coming  ages  will  honour  as  his 
lifelong  heroism. 

To  quote  passages  that  give  inculcation  and 
definition  to  this  would  be  little  representative, 
either  as  to  bulk  or  as  to  wording,  of  its  vital 
importance  in  Stevenson's  body  of  thought;  to 
quote  passages  wherein  this  is  the  atmosphere 
and  presupposition,  making  itself  felt  as  a  pul- 
sation, a  flavour,  a  tonic,  beyond  the  crudeness 
of  words,  would  be  to  quote  well-nigh  all  that  he 
ever  wrote.  There  is  a  sacredness  about  it,  a  ho- 
liness as  cherished  ideal  and  due,  which  makes 

29 


it  more  fitly  a  subject  of  prayer  than  of  disserta- 
to  tion.  You  remember  that  striking  prayer  of 
his  in  verse,  entitled  The  Celestial  Surgeon; 
one  cannot  help  thinking  the  whole  current  of 
Stevenson's  aspiration  flowed  through  that: 

"If  I  have  faltered  more  or  less 
In  my  great  task  of  happiness; 
If  I  have  moved  among  my  race 
And  shown  no  glorious  morning  face; 
If  beams  from  happy  human  eyes 
Have  moved  me  not;  if  morning  skies, 
Books,  and  my  food,  and  summer  rain 
Knocked  on  my  sullen  heart  in  vain :  — 
Lord,  thy  most  pointed  pleasure  take 
And  stab  my  spirit  broad  awake; 
Or,  Lord,  if  too  obdurate  I, 
Choose  thou,  before  that  spirit  die, 
A  piercing  pain,  a  killing  sin, 
And  to  my  dead  heart  run  them  in!" 

In  his  Prayers  written  for  Family  Use  in  Vai- 
lima,  also,  the  petition  for  courage  and  happi- 
ness, and  especially  for  grace  to  fulfil  all  the 
spontaneous  expressions  of  happiness— mirth, 
laughter,  gaiety  — is  the  dominant  note;  it 
sounds  in  some  way  in  every  one  of  them.  Here 
are  some  of  the  petitions,  taken  as  one  runs 
the  collection  through:  "Give  us  courage  and 
gaiety  and  the  quiet  mind. . . .  The  day  returns 
and  brings  us  the  petty  round  of  irritating  con- 
cerns and  duties.  Help  us  to  play  the  man,  help 
us  to  perform  them  with  laughter  and  kind 
faces,  let  cheerfulness  abound  with  industry. 
. . .  Give  us  to  awake  with  smiles,  give  us  to 
30 


labour  smiling. . . .  Give  us  health,  food,  bright  J)tewn6on'6 
weather,  and  light  hearts. . . .  Let  us  lie  down  Rttitube  to 
without  fear  and  awake  and  arise  with  exul- 
tation. . . .  Grant  us  courage  to  endure  lesser 
ills  unshaken,  and  to  accept  death,  loss,  and  dis- 
appointment as  it  were  straws  upon  the  tide  of 
life. . . .  When  the  day  returns,  return  to  us,  our 
sun  and  comforter,  and  call  us  up  with  morn- 
ing faces  and  with  morning  hearts — eager  to  la- 
bour—eager to  be  happy,  if  happiness  shall  be 
our  portion  —  and  if  the  day  be  marked  for  sor- 
row, strong  to  endure  it."  The  day  after  this  last 
petition  was  written  was  marked,  for  his  family, 
by  the  great  sorrow  of  his  sudden  death. 
But  never  was  this  happiness  sought  as  a  mere 
gratification  or  self-appeasement.  In  the  large 
sympathy  of  Stevenson,  so  little  aware  of  self, 
it  was  always  valued  as  if  it  were  a  light  or 
warmth  or  bracing  atmosphere  in  whose  bless- 
ing all  could  share.  He  sought  in  order  that 
he  might  impart;  the  two  could  not  be  disso- 
ciated. In  all  his  literary  calling,  as  well  as  in 
his  personal  relations,  this  was  so.  To  make  his 
neighbour  happy  was  the  surest  way  to  do  his 
neighbour  good.  Even  if  the  neighbour  was  in 
sin  or  error,  needing  to  be  taught  or  reformed, 
he  were  best  approached  by  the  way  of  genial 
comradery  and  entertainment,  and  taught  as 
though  one  taught  him  not.  So,  though  a  potent 
source  of  cheer  and  sweeter  living,  nay,  of  mo- 
nition, Stevenson  never  sets  up  as  a  corrector 
and  reformer,  never  assumes  to  force  his  good- 
ness or  wisdom  on  his  less-favoured  neighbour. 
"There  is  an  idea  abroad  among  moral  peo- 

31 


pie,"  he  says  in  his  Christmas  Sermon,  "that 
Jfttttttbe  to  they  should  make  their  neighbours  good.  One 
Ctfe  person  I  have  to  make  good:  myself.  But  my 

duty  to  my  neighbour  is  much  more  nearly  ex- 
pressed by  saying  that  I  have  to  make  him 
happy  — if  I  may." 

Therefore  if  a  person's  life,  however  conven- 
tionally upright,  is  morose  or  austere,  if  his 
morality  is  not  of  that  fibre  which  engenders 
joy,  it  is  wrong,  it  is  missing  its  true  power  and 
function,  there  is  something  false  in  its  foun- 
dation. "The  kingdom  of  heaven,"  he  says  in 
this  same  Christmas  Sermon,  "is  of  the  child- 
like, of  those  who  are  easy  to  please,  who  love 
and  who  give  pleasure.  Mighty  men  of  their 
hands,  the  smiters  and  the  builders  and  the 
judges,  have  lived  long  and  done  sternly  and 
yet  preserved  this  lovely  character;  and  among 
our  carpet  interests  and  twopenny  concerns, 
the  shame  were  indelible  if  we  should  lose  it. 
Gentleness  and  cheerfulness,  these  come  be- 
fore all  morality;  they  are  the  perfect  duties. 
And  it  is  the  trouble  with  moral  men  that  they 
have  neither  one  nor  other.  It  was  the  moral 
man,  the  Pharisee,  whom  Christ  could  not  away 
with.  If  your  morals  make  you  dreary,  depend 
upon  it  they  are  wrong.  I  do  not  say  'give  them 
up,'  for  they  may  be  all  you  have ;  but  conceal 
them  like  a  vice,  lest  they  should  spoil  the  lives 
of  better  and  simpler  people." 
If  to  some  solemn-visaged  person  the  gentle- 
ness and  cheerfulness  here  praised  seems  in 
Stevenson,  as  it  often  must,  to  have  effervesced 
in  bubbling  rollicking  fun,  let  him  not  be  de- 
32 


ceived.  It  is  not  froth  nor  shallowness;  it  is  an  J>tewn60fl'0 
integral  element  of  that  principle  on  which  he  Jf  (tttlt&e  to 
based  his  comradeship  with  men.  It  is  in  fact  no 
necessary  sign  of  superior  greatness  or  good- 
ness when  we  take  ourselves  with  such  abys- 
mal seriousness.  It  may  rather  be  a  sign  of 
limitation.  Just  as— to  quote  from  the  delight- 
ful Apology  for  Idlers  — "extreme  busyness, 
whether  at  school  or  college,  kirk  or  market, 
is  a  symptom  of  deficient  vitality;  and  a  faculty 
for  idleness  implies  a  catholic  appetite  and  a 
strong  sense  of  personal  identity" ;  —  so,  chang- 
ing the  application  but  not  the  principle,  we 
may  say,  extreme  seriousness  and  strenuous- 
ness,  with  the  thought  always  troubled  for  the 
propriety  and  morality  of  things,  is  a  symptom 
that  the  morality  is  not  quite  ingrained ;  it  is  too 
unsure  of  its  own  integrity  to  let  go  and  take 
itself  for  granted.  If  character  is  the  breath  of 
our  manhood,  —why,  we  are  not  always  taking 
thought  how  to  breathe.  There  is  something 
in  Stevenson's  abandon,  his  freedom  from  the 
"prunes  and  prisms"  of  conventional  conduct, 
his  large  tolerance  for  men  and  creeds,  the 
lightness  with  which  he  moves  in  the  pres- 
ence alike  of  the  grim  and  the  gay,  which  is  to 
life  what  play  is  to  work,  or  the  easy  grace  of 
an  artist  hand  in  the  moulding  of  a  master- 
piece. It  is  in  fact  the  free  play  of  the  spirit 
which  takes  duty  and  experience  without  ef- 
fort, and  as  it  were  in  a  kind  of  leisure  and  non- 
chalance, because  it  is  so  easily  master  of  itself. 
This  was  Stevenson's  working-ideal ;  and  if  he 
reduced  the  expression  of  it  to  the  one  element 

33 


J>tcwri6on't>  of  happiness,  it  was  because  that  was  its  most 
to  palpable  hold  and  handle.  That  was  a  thing 
that  recommended  the  life  behind  it.  "There  is 
no  duty  we  so  much  underrate,"  he  says  further 
in  the  Apology  for  Idlers,  "as  the  duty  of  being 
happy.  By  being  happy,  we  sow  anonymous 
benefits  upon  the  world,  which  remain  un- 
known even  to  ourselves,  or  when  they  are  dis- 
closed, surprise  nobody  so  much  as  the  bene- 
factor. ...  A  happy  man  or  woman  is  a  better 
thing  to  find  than  a  five-pound  note.  He  or  she 
is  a  radiating  focus  of  good  will ;  and  their  en- 
trance into  a  room  is  as  though  another  candle 
had  been  lighted.  We  need  not  care  whether 
they  could  prove  the  forty-seventh  proposi- 
tion; they  do  a  better  thing  than  that,  they 
practically  demonstrate  the  great  Theorem  of 
the  Liveableness  of  Life." 


HE  great  Theorem  of  the  Live- 
ableness of  Life"— this  sums  it 
up  very  well;  this  it  was  that 
Stevenson,  in  all  his  wander- 
ings and  enforced  exile,  in  all 
his  gallant  fight  with  disease, 
set  himself  with  the  fervour  of  an  apostle  to  de- 
monstrate ;  and  the  progressive  solution  of  it, 
sealed  only  when  his  "happy-starred,  full- 
blooded  spirit"  vanished  from  earth,  has  sent  a 
thrill  of  vigour  and  good  cheer  through  the 
world.  My  talk  about  this,  with  the  citations, 
has  already  gone  on,  I  fear,  past  excusable 
length ;  and  yet  the  subject  refuses  to  be  put 
34 


off  without  a  few  words  concerning  how  all 
this  came  to  utterance.  JTttttude  to 

Stevenson  was  a  dedicated  spirit  — dedicated 
and  predestined  to  the  great  art  of  expression. 
It  was  his  joy,  it  was  the  breath  of  his  being, 
to  coin  that  buoyant  clear-seeing  life  of  his  into 
creative  forms  of  word  and  figure.  Not  life  it- 
self was  closer  to  his  heart  than  this.  You  re- 
call that  O  altitudo  which  breaks  out  in  one  of 
his  letters  to  Henley  during  his  happy  hard- 
working season  at  Hyeres:  "O  the  height  and 
depth  of  novelty  and  worth  in  any  art!  and  O 
that  I  am  privileged  to  swim  and  shoulder 
through  such  oceans!  Could  one  get  out  of 
sight  of  land  — all  in  the  blue?  Alas  not,  being 
anchored  here  in  flesh,  and  the  bonds  of  logic 
being  still  about  us.  But  what  a  great  space 
and  a  great  air  there  is  in  these  small  shallows 
where  alone  we  venture!  And  how  new  each 
sight,  squall,  calm,  or  sunrise! ...  I  sleep  upon 
my  art  for  a  pillow;  I  waken  in  my  art;  I  am 
unready  for  death,  because  I  hate  to  leave  it. 
I  love  my  wife,  I  do  not  know  how  much,  nor 
can,  nor  shall,  unless  I  lost  her;  but  while  I 
can  conceive  my  being  widowed,  I  refuse  the 
offering  of  life  without  my  art.  I  am  not  but  in 
my  art;  it  is  me;  I  am  the  body  of  it  merely." 
How  he  was  drawn  into  his  literary  art,  as  it 
were  into  a  fate,  is  a  familiar  tale.  It  came  by 
the  natural  practical  way —the  way  of  appren- 
ticeship. He  made  indeed  starts  on  other  roads : 
on  his  father's  calling  of  lighthouse  engineer- 
ing, for  which  however  his  health  proved  too 
precarious;  and,  to  please  his  father,  on  the  law, 

35 


J>tewtl0on'0  which  he  pursued  just  far  enough  to  pass  as 
to  advocate,  and  then  left  forever.  Meanwhile  his 
congenial  apprenticeship,  self-appointed,  was 
going  on  steadily;  it  was  not  in  him  to  repress 
it,  although  to  begin  with  he  had  little  forecast 
of  what  it  would  amount  to.  All  the  while  he  was 
studying  how  to  express  things  in  language; 
working  with  the  possibilities  of  words,  fit- 
ting words  to  sights  and  sounds  and  thoughts, 
searching  for  the  essential  note  and  key  in 
which  an  idea  should  be  written,  imitating  the 
effects  which  in  his  favourite  authors  he  dis- 
covered and  enjoyed.  It  was  the  artist  drawing 
from  models;  the  composer  aping  Mozart  or 
Haydn;  the  workman  reproducing  according 
to  the  patterns  of  his  master.  Never  mind  the 
future  use  to  be  made  of  it ;  the  work  itself  for 
the  time  being  was  its  own  interest  and  reward. 
"It  was  not  so  much,"  he  says,  "that  I  wished 
to  be  an  author  (though  I  wished  that  too)  as 
that  I  had  vowed  that  I  would  learn  to  write. 
That  was  a  proficiency  that  tempted  me ;  and 
I  practised  to  acquire  it,  as  men  learn  to  whit- 
tle, in  a  wager  with  myself.  . . .  That,"  he  says 
a  little  farther  on  (it  is  in  his  essay  on  A  Col- 
lege Magazine),  "that,  like  it  or  not,  is  the  way 
to  learn  to  write ;  whether  I  have  profited  or  not, 
that  is  the  way." 

I  must  not  let  this  account  of  his  literary  ap- 
prenticeship draw  me  away  from  my  subject;  I 
have  in  fact  introduced  it  not  for  its  own  sake 
but  on  account  of  the  reflex  influence  thereby 
revealed,  of  his  art  on  his  attitude  to  life.  His 
life  coloured  and  vitalized  his  art,  that  is  true; 
36 


it  was  art  of  a  certain  trend  and  significance  ,J)teven00H'6 
because  of  the  life  he  lived  and  interpreted.  Jfttitnbe  to 
But  also  the  converse  is  true :  the  pursuit  of  his 
art,  from  words  onward  and  inward  to  things, 
truths,  relations,  led  him  ever  to  a  closer  and 
clearer  vision  of  life,  and  a  juster  proportioning 
of  its  elements.  His  very  achievements  in  inter- 
pretation brought  with  them  greater  range  and 
depth  of  insight ;  and  where  insight  went,  there 
his  allegiance  went  also.  Starting,  as  he  says, 
with  simple  description,  fitting  what  he  saw 
with  appropriate  words  (a  kind  of  primary  ex- 
ercise in  which  he  had  been  paralleled  by  Ten- 
nyson) he  soon  came  to  have  an  exquisite  sense 
not  only  of  accurate  meanings  but  of  what  he 
calls  the  "key  of  words,"  that  delicate  rapport 
in  the  words  and  rhythms  of  a  passage  which 
corresponds  to  what  artists  call  their  colour- 
scheme.  He  chose  words  not  for  themselves 
alone,  but  for  the  help  they  would  give  other 
words ;  and  so  the  finished  work  was  set  in  one 
key,  with  word  and  word,  image  and  thing  im- 
aged homogeneous.  So  far  forth  this  looks  like 
mere  craftsmanship,  or  if  you  will  grant  it,  ar- 
tistry. It  may  easily  be  despised  by  Philistines 
who  know  not  how  much  travail  of  spirit  has 
gone  to  their  ease  of  reading.  But  while  mere 
word-mongery  is  a  possibility  to  be  shunned, 
on  the  other  hand  it  is  easy  to  underrate  words 
too  much.  After  all,  words  are  almost  the  only 
means  of  laying  soul  upon  soul,  of  effecting  that 
communion  whereby  the  highest  values  of  life 
are  transmitted.  And  with  Stevenson  they  never 
stopped  with  sound  and  manipulation;  they 

37 


stood  for  something;  they  were  elements  in  a 
JTttitube  to  world ;  their  very  atmosphere  and  key  belonged 
to  the  artistry  not  of  sounds  alone  but  of  life. 
The  very  magic  which  they  wrought  became 
vital  in  character  and  conduct.  "One  thing,"  he 
says  in  his  essay  on  Truth  of  Intercourse,  "you 
can  never  make  Philistine  natures  understand ; 
one  thing,  which  yet  lies  on  the  surface,  re- 
mains as  unseizable  to  their  wits  as  a  high 
flight  of  metaphysics  —  namely,  that  the  busi- 
ness of  life  is  mainly  carried  on  by  means  of 
this  difficult  art  of  literature,  and  according  to 
a  man's  proficiency  in  that  art  shall  be  the  free- 
dom and  the  fulness  of  his  intercourse  with 
other  men."  Viewed  in  this  light,  the  art  of 
words  is  simply  the  art  of  telling  the  truth, 
with  all  the  colourings,  the  shadings,  the  pro- 
portions, the  implications,  the  saving-clauses, 
essential  to  making  it  rounded  truth  and  not 
a  caricature  or  distortion. 
We  hear  much  nowadays  about  shifting  or 
newly  determining  the  emphasis  of  a  creed  or 
a  system.  It  is  mainly  a  matter  of  the  propor- 
tions and  perspectives  of  language,  of  getting 
our  dogma  into  such  literary  shape  and  colour 
that  the  sum-total,  as  laid  alike  on  the  discern- 
ing mind  and  the  tenderly  apprehensive  heart, 
shall  correspond  to  our  deep  sense  of  truth. 
There  is  a  kind  of  crystallization  in  ideas  as 
in  style,  a  settling  and  adjustment  of  elements 
until  each  part  has  found  its  place,  its  relation, 
its  fellowship.  We  come  in  sight  of  this  as  soon 
as  we  get  beyond  the  sound  of  words  to  their 
inner  meaning,  as  soon  as  we  look  beyond  the 
38 


symbol  to  the  thing.  Then  we  become  aware 
that  the  thing,  whose  beginning  is  the  word,  JXttitllbe  to 
may  be  the  most  energetic  of  acts,  the  most  in- 
spiring  of  faiths,  the  most  sacred  of  ideals,  all 
implicated  in  a  large  homogeneous  art  of  ex- 
pression. 

Now  with  this  controlling  conception  of  the 
subtle  congruities  and  harmonies  of  his  cher- 
ished art,  there  were  certain  deep  elements  of 
life  ready  to  meet  Stevenson,  just  as  soon  as  his 
working-tools  were  sharpened  and  subdued  to 
mastery.  It  was  not  all  to  be  Treasure  Islands 
and  Prince  Ottos.  His  sense  of  the  fated  mar- 
riage of  words  to  ideas,  and  of  the  proportion- 
ing which  should  make  the  whole  tissue  homo- 
geneous, led  him  duly  toward  the  deep  bases 
of  things ;  and  especially,  as  he  was  a  Scotch- 
man, it  had  a  work  cut  out  for  it  in  the  complex- 
ities and  perplexities  of  accepted  systems.  He 
was  not  of  the  kind,  in  spite  of  his  genial  tem- 
perament, to  dance  by  and  ignore  these.  "With 
high  social  spirits,"  says  his  biographer  Col- 
vin,  "and  a  brilliant  somewhat  fantastic  gaiety 
of  bearing,  Stevenson  was  no  stranger  to  the 
storms  and  perplexities  of  youth.  A  restless  and 
inquiring  conscience,  perhaps  inherited  from 
covenanting  ancestors,  kept  him  inwardly  call- 
ing in  question  the  grounds  of  conduct  and  the 
accepted  codes  of  society.  At  the  same  time 
his  reading  had  shaken  his  belief  in  Christian 
dogma;  the  harsher  forms  of  Scottish  Calvin- 
istic  Christianity  being  at  all  times  repugnant 
to  his  nature."  It  is  out  of  such  a  nature  as  this, 
so  exercised,  that  Stevenson's  gospel  of  cour- 

39 


J)tewn0on'0  age  and  happiness  comes;  out  of  a  nature,  too, 
to  to  whom  an  unsure  word,  an  untempered  col- 
curing  of  idea,  is  a  pain  like  the  pain  of  dis- 
honesty and  falsehood.  There  are  not  wanting 
evidences  of  his  sense  of  the  crookedness  and 
perversity  of  things ;  there  is  an  Omar  Khayyam 
vein  in  his  nature;  you  see  it,  for  example,  in 
his  writings  of  the  Pulvis  et  Umbra  period.  Yet 
how  little  of  this  there  is  in  his  finished  works, 
and  more  especially  in  the  gist  and  outcome 
of  the  whole ;  how  little  even  his  trenchant  dis- 
avowal of  religious  conventionalisms  leaves 
of  what  people  call  skeptical  tendency.  He  is 
no  scoffer,  no  satirist ;  nor  can  you  saddle  him 
with  any  of  the  destructive  -isms  with  which 
the  world  reproaches  men  in  order  to  set  them 
up  as  a  warning. 

That  this  was  no  accident  but  the  result  of  bal- 
anced wisdom  and  sanity,  we  have  indications 
in  his  letters  and  unfinished  sketches.  Not  only 
the  artistic  finish  but  the  tone,  the  influence, 
the  guiding  trend  of  his  work  was  a  matter  of 
solicitude  to  him,  a  matter  to  be  accurately  ad- 
justed. To  his  father  he  writes  from  Hyeres 
about  a  projected  work,  probably  Virginibus 
Puerisque : "  It  is  a  most  difficult  work ;  a  touch 
of  the  parson  will  drive  off  those  I  hope  to  in- 
fluence ;  a  touch  of  overstrained  laxity,  besides 
disgusting,  like  a  grimace,  may  do  harm."  This 
casual  remark  lets  us  well  into  the  spirit  that 
governed  Stevenson's  art,  and  the  sense  of  a 
mission  that  was  upon  him.  The  sturdy  prin- 
ciple was  there ;  the  insight  also,  with  the  de- 
sire to  emancipate  men  from  the  hoary  errors 
40 


that  so  depressed  the  tone  of  life.  But  in  his  J>teven6on'6 
spirit  of  comradeship  and  letting-live  he  shrank  Jfttitllbe  to 
from  setting  up  as  a  teacher,  with  the  superior- 
ity  implied  in  that  assumption;  he  preferred 
rather  to  put  his  thoughts  in  story,  and  in  the 
non-didactic  form  of  conversational  playful  es- 
say ;  and  with  this  he  called  his  masterful  art 
of  word  and  literary  atmosphere  to  his  aid,  so 
that  the  reader,  responding  to  the  magic  thrill, 
should  find  his  thoughts  and  ideals  moving  in 
the  congenial  region,  gathering  the  spiritual 
current  and  standard  from  the  key  of  word  and 
sentiment,  thinking  himself  from  the  concrete 
case  into  the  harmonizing  attitude  to  life,  as 
Owen  thought  the  organism  from  the  single 
bone.  So  art  did  his  teaching,  as  though  he 
taught  not,  and  this  by  transporting  men  into 
the  sunlit  and  bracing  region  where,  simply  by 
looking  round  and  learning  to  be  at  home,  they 
could  orient  themselves. 
In  the  exultant  practice  of  this  self-rewarding 
art  Stevenson's  life  was  a  perpetual  voyage  of 
discovery.  Whether  it  was  in  travel,  in  com- 
ing upon  new  cities  and  mountain-chains  and 
stretches  of  sea-coast;  or  in  exploring  new 
tracts  of  character,  motive,  psychology;  or, 
underlying  all  this,  in  seeing  the  true  relations 
of  life  fall  into  place  and  assume  the  attire  of 
reasonable  and  seemly  interpretation,  hoary 
and  outworn  systems  thus  giving  way  not  to 
dust  and  despite  but  to  reconcilement  and  vital 
solution, —all  was  to  him  virtually  the  creation 
of  a  new  and  happy  world,  from  which  nothing 
human  was  alien,  in  which  the  regions  from 

41 


the  clear  heaven  of  spiritual  beauty  down  to  the 
to  grim  and  troublous  elements  of  being  were 
open  to  a  singularly  penetrative  and  catholic 
sympathy.  Upborne  by  this  spirit  of  discovery, 
and  by  the  sense  of  its  limitless  field  and  re- 
ward, he  could  bear  patiently  and  with  cheer- 
fulness to  snatch  brief  reprisals  from  long  pe- 
riods of  illness,  nay,  could  treat  even  failure  as 
a  mere  incident  and  stimulus  to  more.  As  Gosse 
says  of  him:  "He  never  conceived  that  he  had 
achieved  a  great  success,  but  he  never  lost  hope 
that  by  taking  pains  he  might  yet  do  so."  Or  as 
he  himself  says,  in  words  that  seem  coined  out 
of  this  conscious  trait  (I  quote  from  his  Reflec- 
tion and  Remarks  on  Human  Life):  "I  meant 
when  I  was  a  young  man  to  write  a  great  poem ; 
and  now  I  am  cobbling  little  prose  articles  and 
in  excellent  good  spirits,  I  thank  you.  So,  too, 
I  meant  to  lead  a  life  that  should  keep  mount- 
ing from  the  first;  and  though  I  have  been  re- 
peatedly down  again  below  sea-level,  and  am 
scarce  higher  than  when  I  started,  I  am  as  keen 
as  ever  for  that  enterprise.  Our  business  in  this 
world  is  not  to  succeed,  but  to  continue  to  fail, 
in  good  spirits." 

The  whimsical  epitaph  that  he  proposed  for 
himself  in  his  Inland  Voyage  has  a  good  deal 
the  flavour  of  a  summary  of  his  character.  His 
canoe,  you  remember,  had  capsized  in  theOise, 
and  he  after  much  exertion  had  managed  to 
crawl,  more  dead  than  alive,  upon  an  overhang- 
ing tree  trunk,  his  paddle  still  tightly  clutched 
in  his  hand.  A  mishap  of  no  great  significance 
it  was,  one  such  as  we  daily  laugh  away.  It 
42 


does  not  take  a  great  occasion  to  give  the  last  Jrtewneon'e 
nudge  of  suggestion  to  a  happy  saying,  nor  flttitttbe  to 
need  the  saying  be  magniloquent  to  reverber- 
ate  from  a  depth  of  inner  nature.  If  we  may 
give  weight  to  Carlyle's  adage, "  Burn  your  own 
smoke"—  a  thing  which  he  conspicuously  failed 
to  do  — and  to  George  Eliot's  sombre  advice  to 
"do  without  opium,"surely  in  this  sunnier  spir- 
itual era  with  which  Stevenson  is  identified  we 
may  listen  to  what  in  his  characteristic  way  he 
proposed  so  lightly.  "On  my  tomb,"  he  says, 
"if  ever  I  have  one,  I  mean  to  get  these  words 
inscribed:  'He  clung  to  his  paddle.'" 
Yes;  that  is  what  he  did,  through  a  life  that 
strove  not  for  success  but  for  a  happy,  hopeful, 
helpful  self-expression.  He  clung  to  his  paddle ; 
he  never  gave  up.  What  was  there  to  exchange 
that  buoyant  energy  for,  if  he  had  relinquished 
it?  The  work,  the  art,  the  life,  was  its  own 
heaven,  its  own  exceeding  reward.  Nothing 
that  was  to  be  thereafter  could  take  the  place 
of  that,  until  its  time  came.  Let  us  take  leave  of 
him  in  these  closing  words  of  his  essay  on  El 
Dorado: 

"A  strange  picture  we  make  on  our  way  to  our 
chimaeras,  ceaselessly  marching,  grudging  our- 
selves the  time  for  rest;  indefatigable,  adven- 
turous pioneers.  It  is  true  that  we  shall  never 
reach  the  goal ;  it  is  even  more  than  probable 
that  there  is  no  such  place ;  and  if  we  lived  for 
centuries  and  were  endowed  with  the  powers 
of  a  god,  we  should  find  ourselves  not  much 
nearer  what  we  wanted  at  the  end.  O  toiling 
hands  of  mortals!  O  unwearied  feet,  travelling 

43 


ye  know  not  whither!  Soon,  soon,  it  seems  to 
to  you,  you  must  come  forth  on  some  conspicu- 
ous  hilltop,  and  but  a  little  way  further,  against 
the  setting  sun,  descry  the  spires  of  El  Dorado. 
Little  do  ye  know  your  own  blessedness ;  for 
to  travel  hopefully  is  a  better  thing  than  to 
arrive,  and  the  true  success  is  to  labour." 


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